Tag: creativity

WestVirginiaVille Provides Place For Creatives; Debuts New Song

The digital revolution has created new outlets for long-form journalism, music and storytelling as print publications close down. One example is the website WestVirginiaVille.com.

Douglas Imbrogno created the site to feature West Virginia creatives. Later today, he is going to premiere a new music video by Mountain Stage bandleader Ron Sowell called “Be The Change.”

Imbrogno and Sowell spoke with Eric Douglas about the project and the song debut.

Douglas: Explain to me what WestVirginiaVille is.

Imbrogno: WestVirginiaVille is a multimedia magazine that is able to do everything from regular print feature stories to short documentaries, music, videos, photo essays. It’s really a multimedia magazine on the web.

Douglas: So why did you create WestVirginiaVille in the first place? What need are you filling?

Imbrogno: One of the first things that goes when newspapers contract and shrink and their staffs are decimated, is feature writing, long-form feature stories of the interesting people that make up a place where people live. And that’s a great loss. There is a need for stories about the way that life is lived on a daily basis; why it’s worth living in West Virginia; why people stick it out in a place with some seriously benighted politics at times.

Douglas: So rather than a print magazine, you have all the advantages of moving imagery and sound on top of everything else, plus no printing costs.

Imbrogno: I hope eventually to spin off special edition print publications because that’s where I came from, growing up reading everything from the New York Review of Books to Esquire. That’s why I wanted to become a writer. But we’re also able to do things like short documentaries and we just bought a drone. So we’re doing a lot of really cool drone photography in West Virginia. It’s really amazing because we’re seeing images and views of West Virginia that I’ve never seen and I think most people have never seen.

Douglas: You’ve got a new video coming out. Tell me why this was an important direction to go for WestVirginiaVille.

Imbrogno: Ron came to us with this song called “Be The Change” and I just am in love with this song. I’ve probably heard this song 40 times and I still love it. WestVirginiaVille exists to demonstrate that world class work can be created with these new digital tools in a place like West Virginia.

Douglas: Ron, tell me about the song.

Courtesy WestVirginiaVille
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Ron Sowell sings in a scene from the music video Be The Change.

Sowell: This song came to me out of the political turmoil of last year, and it was an inspiration about “what can I do as a person to change the world or change my little corner of the world?” I felt compelled to interject this into the national conversation.

Douglas: What do you want people to take away from the song?

Sowell: Ideally, I want them to reconsider how they relate to other people. That they would consider not judging people and be more accepting and to listen to each other.

Douglas: Is there a particular lyric? Any favorite lyric in the song that kind of summarizes it?

Sowell: It starts off with “fighting in the street, shouting on the screen, who can be heard, when everybody screams.” And the chorus is, “Be the change that you dream of, Be the change that you desire. Be the healing water, the tames the raging fire. When the hurt and hate divide us. It is the love that will unite us. Be the love. Be the change.”

The music video premieres tonight at 7 pm on WestVirginiaVille’s Facebook page and will be available after that on WestVirginiaVille.com.

Creative Residency Program In Fayetteville Provides Time To Work

Sometimes creativity requires breaking away from the normal routine and focusing on one’s work. Now in its sixth year, the New River Gorge Creative Residency at Lafayette Flats in Fayetteville, W. Va. allows writers and visual artists a quiet place to stay and make art. 

When Shawn Means and Amy McLaughlin opened LaFayette Flats as a boutique vacation rental space in Fayetteville, they wanted to “change the narrative” about the state. They began by decorating their four rental suites with West Virginia art and loading shelves with books by West Virginia authors. 

“We realized that our bookings were going to be much lighter during the winter and we were going to have some space,” Means said. “We thought, ‘How can we use this to better promote the arts?’”

So in January 2015, they decided to host a writer-in-residence.

“We continued with just having the writer-in-residence for the next three years. And then actually last year, we changed it up a little bit and decided to expand it to visual artists as well,” McLaughlin said. 

The first several years, the program was a three month long residency. This year, they decided to allow creatives to come for shorter stays. Applicants for the residency had been almost exclusively out of state, but those changes appealed to more West Virginians. This season, they are three creatives, all from West Virginia, staying for one month each. 

Credit Eric Douglas / WVPB
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WVPB
Matt Browning, a writer-in-residence at LaFayette Flats.

Matt Browning, a Charleston, W. Va.-based author just finished his one-month residency at the end of December. 

“At the risk of sounding corny and cliché, I hoped this experience would change me. I learned very early on that it was going to do that,” he said. “Being here has really allowed me to rediscover my creativity. I won’t finish this book that I’m writing while I’m here. You know, four weeks isn’t enough time to write a novel, but I’m hoping to have probably 75 percent of a first draft done.” 

Means said the key to the success of this program has been the reaction, and the reception, the creatives have received from the entire community. 

“The Fayetteville community is very welcoming anyway, and they seem to have gone over and above welcoming our creative-in-residences. They’ve had people who recognize them on the street just from social media posts and welcome them to the town,” he said. “A lot of local businesses think of the residency as their’s, not just ours at Lafayette Flats. They think of it as the Fayetteville residency.”

You can find out more about the New River Gorge Creative Residency program at Lafayette Flats in Fayetteville on their website. They will begin taking applications for next winter in August.

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